


No-Bake Oven

by XaviaAndromedovna



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: But with some Hale Family Feels, Crack, F/F, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Post 3a, Time traveling cookies, coffee shop AU, except Canon Compliant, surprise!cookies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 22:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1049287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XaviaAndromedovna/pseuds/XaviaAndromedovna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time traveling baked goods as your star product is a totally legitimate business model.  Or at least, Stiles has convinced Lydia that it is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No-Bake Oven

**Author's Note:**

> I 100% blame a_q for this. Although we are totally making surprise!cookies a thing.
> 
> unbeta'd

As usual, it was totally Stiles’s fault.

Now that Scott was a bona fide alpha, he needed an emissary.  Deaton was out of the question since when they had to ice Peter (because _Peter_ ) he became Cora’s emissary.  Stiles stepped up to fit the bill.  Thus, in the months since Cora and Derek left, Stiles had been honing his skills, and actually became quite impressive at channeling his spark.  Of course, while his Celtic rites were flawless, his Latin still left something to be desired.

Lydia’s not quite sure how it happened, but she and Stiles had become quite close, in the sense that she refers to him as her gay best friend, and he counters by calling her his _other_ brother from another mother.  (‘If you can’t recognize my identity as bi-curious,’ Stiles explained, “then I don’t have to recognize your identity as the femme-iest femme in history.’  Oddly, it works for them.)

So it was not unusual for her to be in the Stilinski kitchen after school one day in May, nor for Stiles to be practicing magic in the kitchen, despite his dad’s new rule specifically banning magic in the house.  He was currently trying to enchant a mirror so he could see the future.

“… fuerunt crustulum!” A pulse flies from his fingertips and bounces off the mirror.  They duck as the pulse careens towards the microwave, which receives it with a DING!

“Stiles…” she starts with equal parts trepidation and frustration, “what the Hell did you just do?!”

He guffaws in bewilderment, hands flying about as he points to the mirror, microwave, and himself awkwardly.  “I… it just… uhhhhh… what _did_ I do?”

She sighs, flips her hair, and purses her lips.  “It was all correct until the last part, where you literally said, ‘there will have been cookie.’”

He opens and snaps shut his jaw, looking down sheepishly.  “I was thinking of how much I wanted cookies while I was doing it…”  If she were even remotely interested in the lanky spaz, the embarrassed blush he’s now sporting would be unbearably attractive.  But she’s not, and who knows if he just released the kraken or other comparable evil that would now invade their planet via microwave.

“ _Stiles!_   That’s the first lesson of magic!!  PAY.  THE FUCK.  ATTENTION!”

“I’m sorry!  I can’t take my meds when I do this stuff!”

Suddenly, the microwave turns on, the time holding constant at 20:16.  After a few seconds of Lydia and Stiles freaking the fuck out, it dings again and goes still.

“We need to call Scott.”

“Yeah, you do that while I wrap this shit in mountain ash.  The last thing we need right now is a cookie monster coming out of it.  HA, get it?  Cookie monster?”  She doesn’t dignify his pun with a response, instead mentally praising her decision to keep their alpha on speed-dial.

“Hey Lyds, what’s up?”

“Stiles enchanted a microwave by accident and it’s acting up, we need you here ASAP in case it goes on the offensive.”

“Uhhhh… okay I’ll… be right there…”  He hangs up as she ventures back into the kitchen to see Stiles staring the microwave down.

“Now what are you doing?”

“It looks like there’s something in there.”

“Like what?”

“I dunno…” he reaches slowly for the microwave door.

“Stiles, don’t you dare!” she shouts.  The part of Stiles that is still terrified of her complies.  She loves that she can still exert that kind of influence on him.  “Wait till Scott gets here.”

When Scott arrives a few minutes later, he stands menacingly in front of the microwave, ready to face whatever comes out of it.  Stiles draws in a breath to hold and opens the door.

Inside, is a plate of chocolate-chip cookies.

Scott cocks his head in confusion.  He tentatively reaches for one, takes it out, and eats it.  He moans.

“Oh my god these are perfect!”

The two stare at him like he’s the craziest idiot they’ve ever met.  He takes the plate out of the microwave and holds it out to them.  “Try one!”

They share a look before each taking one and biting into it.  Within half an hour the entire plate of cookies is devoured.

“Best.  Spell.  Ever.”

~~~

Every day at 4:20pm and am (‘told you they’re made with drugs,’ Stiles quips), the microwave dings with a fresh batch of cookies.  It only takes the sheriff two days to figure it out and decree that Stiles’s punishment for doing magic in the house is that his dad gets three cookies from each batch.  Deaton explains that as long as whoever is making the cookies in the future keeps making them, they should keep receiving cookies.  He recommends they keep a log of ‘shipments’ though, just in case.

After three weeks of this, the microwave has produced more cookies than they can possibly eat healthily, and no signs that they’re baked with extract of evil.  And since Lydia’s a perpetual overachiever and Stiles needs something to occupy him over the summer (if only to keep the darkness at bay), they come up with the idea of starting a coffee shop where they can sell the magical cookies.  The sheriff thinks it’s an excellent idea and helps them secure a space and permits.  They need someone 18 or over to be listed as the owner, to which Scott readily agrees.  The three pool together some money for start-up costs, with Isaac pitching in a considerable amount, citing his father’s life insurance policy as blood money he needs to burn.  Thus, the Gingerbread Monster Café is born.

It only takes a week for the café to get a reputation as both the place to go for Beacon Hills’ growing supernatural population, and as the place with the best damn cookies in the state.  The entire pack gets jobs there, and there is an unspoken arrangement that Allison, Danny, Lydia, and Stiles cover full moons.  The town gets a little frustrated that it closes at odd hours sometimes, when pack business calls, but by the time August rolls around, they’ve managed to hire two people outside the pack to hold down the fort when that happens.  Aiden and Ethan are _not_ actually anywhere near high-school age, so they ‘drop out’ and move to the daytime shifts with the two newbies when senior year starts up for everyone else.

One day in September, Lydia gets a phone call in the middle of AP Calculus.  The microwave didn’t ding last night.  She and Stiles rush out, Deaton on speakerphone as they pull out of the school parking lot.

“Whoever has been transmitting the cookies forgot a shipment.  There’s nothing you can do except hope that it’s a one-time thing, instead of an indication that your microwave has lost its magic.”

“Great, because _that_ ’s an excellent economic model, hope the magical microwave starts working again…”  Lydia rolls her eyes and picks up speed.

“Wait, so the person who’s sending them has to have the microwave, right?  So it’s probably one of us.”  Stiles is getting an idea.  “Which means we just have to figure out which one of us knows the recipe!”

When they get there and put Stiles in the kitchen, they learn that Stiles is definitely _not_ the source of the cookies.

“Okay, so I can’t tell salt and sugar part, do you have a better idea?”

“Yeah,” a familiar voice says from the door, “go back to high school.”

Stiles doesn’t miss a beat, only registers his shock at Derek Hale being back in his life as suddenly as he left with a maniacal grin.  “Sure thing, dude, just as soon as I get you a Sourwolf Special.  It’s bitter like your manpain.”  Stiles disappears into the back as Derek rolls his eyes fondly and approaches the counter.

“He’s not kidding,” Lydia adds.  “Oddly enough, it’s our second most popular drink.”  His hint of a smile abruptly disappears as his eyebrows knit together.  “Can I get you anything else?”

Derek’s eyes trail to the kitchen.  “He smells off.”

Lydia frowns.  “It’s the darkness.  He’s actually pretty good today.”  The beta’s eyes stay glued on the kitchen, obviously listening to whatever Stiles is doing, probably fetching more of the secret ingredient.  “You should talk to him.”

Derek snorts.  “Talking isn’t exactly my strong suit.”

“You can say that again,” Stiles interjects, emerging from the back with a container labeled 'DANGER: ACONITE'.  Derek jerks to attention.

“What the fuck are you doing with that?”

Stiles smirks as he prepares the drink.  “It’s the secret ingredient.  We don’t ever put in a lethal amount, and when you mix it with chocolate, for some reason it just gets werewolves _really_ drunk.  After midnight, we lock the front door and turn into a supernatural bar.”  He places a steaming cup in front of the skeptical wolf.  “Hope you didn’t drive here!”

Derek sniffs it and growls.  He takes a tentative sip before blinking in surprise.  “That’s actually really good.”

Stiles positively _beams_.  It warms Lydia’s heart.  Stiles never had to tell her how heartbroken he was when Derek left.  Actually, she reconsiders, maybe him being here is a horrible idea.  “Derek,” she pipes up, “you don’t seem like the coffee shop type.”

He gulps down more of his Sourwolf Special and tries to hide his contented smile.  “I... heard about your cookies.”

Lydia shares a glance with her co-manager.  “Unfortunately, the microwave didn’t produce anything today, but hopefully if you come back around 4:30 there will be a new batch.”

The confusion on their friend’s face looks physically painful.  “What.”

“Our cookies are from the future, it’s a long story.”  Stiles says with a wink at Lydia.  “Will you still be around later?”

“Actually, Cora and I have moved back here.”  He looks into Stiles eyes with a dozen emotions begging for expression, none of which can penetrate Derek’s expert deadpan.  “For good.”  Lydia’s not really good at reading either of their subtexts very clearly, but she’s pretty sure Stiles’s heart rate has skyrocketed.  Derek takes a last sip of his drink before pulling out a $20.

“No way, dude, it’s on the house.”

“Think of it as an IOU,” Derek responds, and to Lydia’s ears it sounds dangerously like flirting.  “You owe me a cookie.”  He stands upright from where he’s been leaning on the counter and calmly walks out the door.

She can’t help smiling back at Stiles as every one of his atoms starts vibrating.  “We _need_ to fix that microwave.”

~~~

At exactly 4:30pm, the older of the two remaining Hales strides back into the Gingerbread Monster, his alpha Cora next to him.  Lydia smirks wickedly.  Stiles isn’t the only one craving wolf now that she and Aiden have dropped the ‘with benefits’ from their friendship description.  She wordlessly walks over to the microwave, removes two magic cookies (thank _god_ , she muses), and escorts them to a table in the middle of the café.

“Is it them?!” Stiles calls, coming out from the back.  He plops down in the remaining chair and watches them with crazy, hopeful eyes.  “Just wait until you taste it.  We debated calling them Spontaneous Orgasm because that’s what they are.”

“ _You_ debated that before we gave you that look,” Lydia retorts, referring to the twin eyebrow raises the Hales give him.

“Whatever, just try them!”

The Hales dig in.  They get the same look on their face simultaneously.  It may just be the most heartbreaking thing Lydia’s ever seen.  “Mom’s recipe,” Cora whispers.

Oh.

Stiles sucks in a breath as Derek forces himself to swallow before stoically leaving the table and slipping out of the café.  Cora trails after her brother with a distracted, “I should…”

Lydia chokes down a scream.  She knows the difference between her cries by now, and she only gets this one when Stiles, Scott, or Allison are in a particular funk.  She can feel the guilt and repressed memories waft off her friend and envelop her.  She reaches for his hand.

“It’s not your fault, Stiles.”

He swallows unevenly.  “Yeah, it kinda is.”

The wolves come back through the door.  “You said the cookies are from the future, right?”  Cora is restless as she pushes past them and into the kitchen.  She starts pulling out ingredients as the three of them watch her with concerned confusion.

“Do you even know what’s in them?”

“Do _you_?”  Cora snaps back at her brother.  He grimaces and bares his neck at his alpha, who pouts in apology and continues baking.  “We’re the only two people who could possibly know this recipe, so unless you plan on helping me, I’m baking.”  They watch in silence as she deftly mixes the strange combination of ingredients and places them on a baking sheet, which goes into the industrial oven for exactly 11 minutes.

When they come out, she tastes one and shakes her head.  “Damn it…”  Stiles gingerly comes over and takes one.  When she doesn’t rip his head off his neck, he takes a bite.  He suddenly gets really excited.  “No fucking way!  You’re the mystery neighbor!”

“What are you talking about?  These aren’t them.”  But Stiles isn’t listening.  He frantically piles the cookies onto a plate and rushes to the magic microwave, removing the day’s shipment.  “We’ve never tried sending anything ourselves before.”  He presses the Clock button, dials 06:28, presses the Power button, dials 20:04, and hits Start.

“How do you know what buttons to press?”

“That’s the beauty of it!  Because I know they get there, it doesn’t matter!  I get to determine how the output mechanism works!”

“What.”

Stiles continues, whole body pulsing.  “Right after my mom died, there was a random plate of cookies in the microwave that tasted just like these.  My dad thought a neighbor gave them to me while he was out, I thought a neighbor gave them to _him_ when _I_ was out, and we never knew how the Hell they got there.  NOW WE KNOW!!!”

Three sets of eyes blink incredulously at him, jaws slack.

Lydia is the first to recover.  “Okay, so then we know that by 2016 we have the recipe.  We just need to figure out what went wrong.”

“That’s two years from now,” Stiles whines.  “I wanna know what’s in these damn cookies that’s so addictive!”

“There’s another ingredient,” Derek contributes.  “I don’t know what, but mom said it was a secret.”

“Well that explains a lot,” Cora mutters.

“It has to be pretty rare though, because she only made them every few years or so.”

“Every few _years_?!”  Stiles runs a hand through his hair.  “Oh my god, we’re gonna go out of business.”

Lydia puts a stilling hand on his shoulder.  “No we’re not.  Obviously if we’ll have thought it was unsustainable we won’t have sent so many shipments for four months straight.”

Stiles mouths her words back, working through what she’s trying to say.  “You’re probably right.  Also, I don’t wanna know how you came up with that sentence so naturally.  Are you a time lord?  Because that was pretty timey-wimey.”

~~~

Two weeks later, Cora stalks through the front door and up to the counter.  Lydia knows it’s been exactly two weeks because every time Derek walks into the coffee shop when Stiles is working, Stiles runs up to him, plants a kiss on his lips, and tells him “Happy [N]th Dayiversary!” in as purposefully obnoxious a manner as possible.  Today, it has been 14 days since Stiles and Derek left Cora with Lydia at the café while they went back to the wolves’ apartment to yell/reconnect/angst/make out/use their words/not use their words/do more than make out/etc.

“I know what the secret ingredient is,” Cora states triumphantly as she slaps the Wikipedia article onto the counter.

Lydia raises her eyebrow.  “Night-blooming cereus…”

“My mom had a few in her garden before the fire.  They only bloom one night a year, but they make these potato-like things.”

“So how do we get one?”  The alpha’s lips curl mischievously as she grabs her hand.  Lydia is very much intrigued.  She follows the girl out to her car.  “Get in.”

Oh, Lydia would go with her _anywhere_ , but Cora needs to earn it.  “I still have work.”

“This _is_ work.”

“You’re not the boss of me.” Cora stops halfway in her seat.  She gets back out, closes the door calmly, and saunters up to Lydia, eyes red.  She runs a clawed finger almost imperceptibly down the side of the banshee’s face.  Lydia closes her eyes, relishing the touch. 

“Are you always such a stubborn ice queen?”

She opens them, staring defiantly into the werewolf’s, a blatant challenge.  “Are you always such a petulant control freak?”

“I asked you first.”

“I asked you second.”

Cora snorts, but doesn’t look away.

“Ugh, just make out already!” Danny calls from across the parking lot, on his way in to his shift.

Lydia takes the smirk still on Cora’s lips as permission to do just that.

They can get the cactus tomorrow.

~~~

When a reporter from a prominent gay magazine interviews the no-longer-teenaged owners two years later, they have opened a chain throughout Northern California and begun production on the past batches of cookies.  And in good time too; the microwave stopped receiving cookies the night the first batch was made. The reporter sits down with the co-owners and their partners, the Hales, and asks what the secret to their success is.

“Magic,” Lydia answers completely innocently.  Stiles loses his shit, and even Derek snorts.  Cora rolls her eyes fondly.

“It’s all Stiles’ fault, really,” Lydia adds.  Although, looking at how happy the four of them are, perhaps ‘fault’ is a little strong.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I made cookies last night, put the leftovers in my microwave so they wouldn't dry out as fast, and forgot about them until this morning, when I opened my microwave and saw a random pile of cookies. It made me ridiculously happy, so I told my internet friends and we birthed a plot bunny.
> 
> Sorry I'm not sorry.
> 
> Also, some of you might have recognized a reference to "A Blossoming Romance" by Trelkez. And if you didn't, you should probably go read it :) It's sadly not mine, nor is _Teen Wolf_. At least I have my cookies...


End file.
